SANGEETA BIJLANI & MOHAMMAD AZHARUDDIN
The 1990s: One of the most famous/infamous and successful captains of the Indian cricket team was Mohammad Azharuddin, an exceptional cricketer. Sangeeta Bijlani was a successful model and an established actress when she met Azhar. Though married at that point to a girl named Naureen, with whom he had two sons, they had a flaming affair and Mohammad Azharuddin married Sangeeta Bijlani in 1996. Theirs was the most talked about and controversial cricketer-actress affairs. The marriage though, ended in 2010, when Azhar was rumored to be having an affair with national-level badminton star Jwala Gutta (who denies the affair completely). Ekta Kapoor produced a biopic on Azharuddin, in 2018, with Emraan Hashmi playing the cricketer.
Of the younger generation of cricket-cinema canoodles, Zaheer Khan and Isha Sharvani dated for a number of years but didn’t make it to the altar. The flamboyant Yuvraj Singh, after having whirled many a giddy Bollywood wannabe on her toes, including a short dalliance with Deepika Padukone (before she became a big-ticket star), eventually wedded Hazel Keech, a starlet who never made it beyond that, for lack of opportunity. Off-spinner Harbhajan Singh wedded small-time actress Geeta Basra in 2015 and they have a daughter since.
